In my previous post about portfolios, I mentioned Wakelet and its exceptional Portfolio tool that allows students to take ownership of their portfolios even after they finish school. Wakelet portfolios serve as a valuable tool for capturing students’ learning journeys, documenting their growth, and supplying an alternative to traditional assessments. 

To recap, Wakelet is a platform that enables users to save various types of content in an organized collection that can be easily shared worldwide. If you want to learn more about Wakelet, I recommend checking out my previous post on Wakelet.

Now, let’s delve into the Portfolio feature. One crucial aspect I look for in a portfolio tool is its ability to be carried forward by students beyond their school years. Wakelet has rapidly emerged as one of the top choices for students and teachers alike to create digital portfolios effortlessly. Digital portfolios offer an excellent solution for showcasing learning by not only demonstrating what students have learned but also illustrating how they have applied that learning to their own creations. Students of all ages and subjects can create portfolios using Wakelet, making it an ideal platform for teaching them the significance of digital curation and how to apply it effectively.

Personally, I use Wakelet to curate resource collections for educators attending my presentations, and educators worldwide utilize it to organize their own resources as well.

Why Wakelet

Student Ownership

The portfolio tool provides students with the power to select their best work and explore the reasons behind their choices, representing their learning journey. Through creating portfolios, students will recognize that their decisions regarding design and content are personal and distinct, thereby enhancing their confidence in expressing and sharing their unique voices and experiences. This is all possible due to the fact that in Wakelet you have the ability to add comments to any content you add to your Wakelet.

Student Reflection

Reflection is a crucial element in student portfolios as it fosters lasting knowledge retention, develops a habit of self-assessment that hopefully extends throughout their lives, and it will enhance the learning process for the students. When students curate the work intended for inclusion into their digital portfolios, they will engage in natural reflection on each item. When the students are reflecting on the content students will be able to acknowledge the significance of each item and they can evaluate their growth in their work and creativity.

Student-Led Curation

A significant number of students already engage in content curation on social media platforms, where they share photos, stories, and videos. By adopting a portfolio approach to showcase their mastery, students have the opportunity to curate various elements of their work. Guiding students on how to compile these artifacts into a presentation for parents, the community, or a global audience not only teaches them valuable skills but also instills the understanding of utilizing technology for meaningful purposes beyond passive consumption.

Collaboration

One thing I always tried to do was get my students to collaborate and Wakelet is a way to introduce collaboration in the classroom through peer editing. Students can collaborate by reviewing and providing meaningful peer feedback on each other’s digital portfolios, using prompts as guidance. This collaborative process nurtures a classroom culture of trust among learners and imparts one of the most crucial skills they will carry with them throughout their lives.

Real-World Application

Digital portfolios provide both educators and students with a chance to curate their individual skills, expertise, growth, and specialized areas for a global audience in the real world. Simultaneously, they teach the importance of maintaining an authentic online presence. As students start applying for jobs or universities, they come to recognize the impact of showcasing their abilities instead of merely describing them. Digital portfolios serve as living documents that evolve over time alongside their creators, reflecting their ongoing progress and development.

Create Multimedia Collections

One of the awesome features of Wakelet is its ability to allows users to combine images, text, links, and files into a single, comprehensive space. For those of us who don’t speak tech, this means students can incorporate various types of media like photographs of their hands-on creations, recordings of presentations to standard word documents into their digital portfolios.

Wrapping it Up with a Bow

The best part of digital portfolios is their ability to offer educators and students an invaluable opportunity to curate and present their unique talents, knowledge, and growth to a global audience. By creating an easily shareable site students have the ability to showcase their accomplishments, and learn how to use the digital world authentically. Digital citizenship is something that becomes woven into the work they are presenting.

Digital portfolios serve as a dynamic and evolving tool that reflects the ongoing progress and development of the students (a.k.a. the Creators). As educators we should be embracing digital portfolios, to help the students confidently navigate the real world, leaving a lasting impression of their abilities and open doors to exciting opportunities based on their showcased skills and achievements. Let me know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below. In our next post, we will get into the nuts and bolts of how to use Wakelet Portfolios!